Can Technology-Tourism Interaction Promote Responsible Practice Preventing Overtourism!

Technology and tourism are intertwined. The interaction between the two then remains instrumental to the tourism growth-mobility making changes in its production, consumption behavior, and business ecosystem. Primarily interaction transformed scattered and unorganized travel into orderly and organized tourism. It also assisted organized tourism to spread amid mass milieu beyond the elitist edge in the post-1950s. Further, it played a crucial role in a qualitative and quantitative transformation of tourism from mass to conscious and sustainable and eventually to responsible practices. Qualitative and quantitative changes from scattered to organized mobility, then mass-mobility beyond carrying capacity, controlled or sustainable-mobility, and finally to the responsible-mobility are technology-tourism interaction driven. The post-1950 increasing mobility in the tourism sector became the indicator of the economic success evident in socio-economic makeover at many places overtly. The overtourism phenomenon emerged as the logical extension of tourism’s rapid increment, then. With the growth of information and communication technology (ICT) dependence within civil society and tourism, this phenomenon and its countercultural reaction turned global by the early twenty-first century. Consequently, a responsible practice emerged comprehending neither limitless growth nor controlled mobility can make a place better to live and better for visit and experience. The increasing application of Virtual Reality (VR) technology during the 2020 pandemic also makes the World perceive this new understanding. The present chapter will focus on how technology-tourism interaction could translate the new understanding into practice resisting the overtourism phenomenon.